الفهرس 
Introduction and Aim of the WorkOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Background: Breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies, and accounts for a substantial percentage of female cancer deaths. Current histopathological and immune-histochemical breast cancer markers are relatively crude resulting in non-negligible treatment failures. A few studies have assessed the expression and significance of connexin 26 (CX26) in breast tumor tissues. These studies brought up much controversy regarding the reliability of CX26 expression as a breast cancer prognostic indicator.
Purpose: This study was conducted to investigate CX26 expression in breast cancer, and its relation to different clinicopathological and outcome parameters. The aim was to define whether or not CX26 expression can be clinically utilized as a reliable marker of breast cancer prognosis.
Patients and Methods: 144 breast cancer patients were evaluated. Postoperatively, tumor tissues were subjected to immunohistochemical (IHC) examinations for CX26 expression. Patients were given adjuvant treatments according to their treating oncologists’ judgment, and were followed up for a median of 41 months (range 20-55). Eventually, CX26 status, clinicopathological and outcome data were collected and subjected to correlation and survival analyses.
Results: CX26 was positive in 47.2% (68/144) of the breast tumors. Statistically significant correlations were observed between CX26 expression and large tumor size (P = 0.003), lymphovascular invasion (P < 0.001) and nodal metastases (P < 0.001). Among outcome parameters, only times-to-recurrence were considerably shorter in the CX26-positive group, and differences were statistically significant (P = 0.002, <0.001 and 0.005 for overall, locoregional and metastatic recurrence respectively). Univariate analysis showed tumor size, lymphovascular invasion and nodal status, but not CX26 expression, to be significant prognostic factors. Multivariate analysis showed nodal status to be the only independent prognostic factor.
Conclusions: According to these results, CX26 expression does not seem to be a reliable marker of breast cancer prognosis. Rather, it may mark an aggressive phenotype of breast cancer that tends to attain a large size and to invade into local lymphatics and blood vessels, resulting in profound nodal metastasis and early systemic metastasis.